The Scar - China Mieville [284]
The woman was right. What kind of stupid, idiot coincidence would we have to believe—what chain of unlikeliness—to think that our Hedrigall leaves, and in a nigh-world another stays, and is lost—and found again, in the whole of the sea, by us. We have not been told the truth.
I remember the look Doul gave me.
He looked for me and found me, on the Grand Easterly, and told me with his eyes to come, listen, and finish this. He told me so much with that glance, and left so much unexplained. So much was clear: What he had done. His games, his manipulations.
I picture him, meeting with Hedrigall, the loyal cactus-man frightened and appalled by the Lovers’ plan. Doul, making his suggestions. Hiding Hedrigall somewhere secret and quiet. Slipping out silently as only he could move, cutting the Arrogance free; bringing Hedrigall out again, later, to terrify the populace with his stories of canyons in the sea. So that Doul would have to say nothing. Safe in his loyalty.
Or perhaps it was Fennec who suggested that Hedrigall hide: a plan in case the Crobuzoner rescue failed to turn us back to home waters.
But I saw Doul’s look. If all this was Fennec’s doing, then Doul knew of it, and helped it run.
I think of all the times that Doul told me things, and hinted to me, letting me know where we would go, what we would do. Knowing that I knew Silas Fennec, Simon Fench, knowing that I would spread the word to him. Angry only when I spread the wrong sedition.
Spending time with me, and bringing me close. I came close. Using me as a conduit.
I am agog with how much he knew, and watched. I wish I could know when it started—whether I have been used for many, many months, or only in the final days. I do not know how much of what Doul does is strategy, and how much is recoil. Certainly he has known far, far more than I had thought.
I am left uncertain of how much I was used.
There is another possibility. It disturbs me.
I have heard again and again, from many people, many times, that this Hedrigall is not quite the same as ours. His manner is different, his voice more hesitant. His face, they say, is more—or perhaps less—scarred. He is a refugee from another world. People believe that.
It is possible. It is possible that he told us the truth.
But even so, it could not be luck alone. I saw Doul: he was waiting for this Hedrigall, and for me. So it cannot be chance that this Hedrigall came. There is another explanation.
Maybe it was Doul’s doing. I heard music. Maybe this was Doul, playing possibilities, making a concerto of likelihood and unlikelihood.
Did he play his perhapsadian at night, as we approached the Scar, as the possible worlds around us grew more intrusive? Finding the one where Hedrigall survived, pulling him out of it, pulling him here to be found?
Such a tenuous chain: that I would be there with someone who would be believed, that Doul could find me with his eyes. So many chances: Doul must be the luckiest man in Bas-Lag. Or he planned the unplannable. Preparing me for that moment.
Could he play possibilities like a virtuoso, making sure the one that occurred was the one that had me there, beside Tanner, watching and listening as Hedrigall arrived, ready?
And what if fact-Bellis would not be there at that time? Did he bring out another? Bring out me? The one who would be in the right place at the right time, for his plans?
Am I a nigh-Bellis?
And if I am, what happened to the other? The fact?
Did he kill her? Is her body floating somewhere, rotting and eaten? Am I a replacement? Pulled through into existence to replace a dead woman—to be where Doul needed her to be?
All that so that he could turn the city around, and never come forward. Was this the only way? He would do all this to have his way, and to seem to have no will at all.
I will never be certain of what happened, of exactly how and how much, amid all the chaos and the blood and fighting, I was used.
That I was used, I have no doubt.
Doul has no